Tennessee Valley Authority
Campbell Creek Energy Efficient Homes Project
The Campbell Creek research project is a unique test facility that will enable TVA and its partners, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and EPRI, to evaluate the effectiveness of residential construction and efficiency technologies in a controlled environment.
TVA has built three experimental homes at Campbell Creek and will used them over the next few years to evaluate residential building techniques, energy efficiency technologies, smart grid concepts and consumer energy-use behaviors.
TVA will use the results to develop the best, most cost-effective residential energy efficiency and demand-response tools to educate builders, developers and consumers. “Demand response” refers to approaches that encourage consumers to reduce their energy use during periods of peak demand.
- One home serves as a control for the project and represents a typical house currently built in the Tennessee Valley. It incorporates local building codes and will serve as a control against which the other homes are compared. It is projected to use slightly less energy than a new house built to the International Energy Conservation Code.
- The second home, also built as a typical house, has been retrofitted with energy efficiency technologies that an existing homeowner could add to improve efficiency. It is projected to use two-thirds of the energy of a new house built to code.
- The third home has been built using the latest in construction technologies to make it as efficient as possible and still provide excellent curb appeal. It will employ photovoltaic panels and solar water heating to help make it a near zero-energy house. It is projected to use one-third the energy of a "code" house.
TVA, ORNL and EPRI will monitor the energy use and effectiveness of these new technologies over the next three years. Consistent living conditions will be simulated in each home so that comparable data can be gathered. Simulations include opening and closing the refrigerator door, turning showers on and off and washing clothes. TVA will also use the homes to test other new technologies as they are developed.
As TVA and the distributors of TVA power evaluate smart grid concepts for the residential environment, TVA will be able to test those concepts at Campbell Creek. Smart grid technology incorporates information and communications technology to improve the efficiency, reliability and cost of delivering power to consumers. These homes will allow builders, developers and consumers to learn about how to apply these new technologies, as well as their costs and benefits.
Construction of the Campbell Creek homes
TVA worked through the Knoxville Area Association of Realtors to identify home size, aesthetics and price points that would be good market performers in the greater Knoxville area. TVA spent about $30,000 in modifications to the homes to cover the builder’s incremental costs, which include building upgrades and provisions to simulate occupancy and monitor performance. In addition, manufacturers and suppliers contributed approximately $54,000 in materials, equipment and labor (see column at right).
In building these three houses, TVA has created a multimillion-dollar research facility for about 10 percent of the cost of creating the testing capacity in a laboratory. This project demonstrates that through the combined expertise of TVA, ORNL and the building industry, it’s possible to construct homes that have all the features desired by home buyers yet have less than half the energy needs of homes currently being built.
TVA has not had a residential research project of this type underway since its solar home research in the 1980s.